Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the alien thrills of “Disclosure Day,” the spoof “Stop! That! Train!” and the supernatural “The Voice Of Our Mother.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Voices of Our Mother,” a new gothic family drama now playing in theatres, a death in the family revives old animosities and secrets, leaving a group of estranged siblings to wonder if their situation is natural or supernatural.
CAST: Mark O’Brien, Sheila McCarthy, Georgina Reilly, Carolina Bartczak, Alex Ozerov-Meyer, and Anna Ferguson.
REVIEW: A mix of family drama and the supernatural, “The Voices of Our Mother” takes geriatric health issues and gives them a demonic spin.
When we first meet family matriarch Harriet Scaflen (Sheila McCarthy) her health has taken a turn after the death of his 95-year-old mother.
Her four children, William (Mark O’Brien, who also wrote and directs), Annika (Georgina Reilly), Therese (Carolina Bartczak) and Martin (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), are summoned to the family home to figure out next steps. Trouble is, they are estranged from her and each other.
Despite their mother’s presiding physician’s claims that she “appears to be healthy,” something must be wrong because mom has never behaved like this before.
A story of evil awoken from resentment, revenge, grief and intergenerational trauma, “The Voices of Our Mother” has a great ensemble, but it’s Sheila McCarthy’s wild performance that sticks.
The “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” hands in an uninhibited performance that brings her inner demon to the fore. She’s no stranger to horror, having appeared in “Anything for Jackson,” a dark horror comedy about ancient spells and a “reverse-exorcism,” but her work here brings an intensity that is truly disturbing. It’s also interesting to see the usual trope of a child possessed by evil flipped to an elderly matriarch.
Writer, director and actor Mark O’Brien takes a relatable situation, a family brought together to care for a parent, and weaves in ideas of intergenerational trauma and family secrets as a catalyst for a slow-burn story of ancestral evil and possession.
Add to that atmospheric sound design and some wild practical effects and you get “The Family Stone” meets “The Exorcist” with a side of “Hereditary” for extra impact.
“The Voices of Our Mother’s” slow burn ignites when McCarthy lets her freak flag fly but it also does a nice job of blending family dysfunction with the supernatural.
Winnipeg born Terry Sawchuk is one of the legends of the NHL, an Original Six era player and leader in wins by goaltenders. A new film, “Goalie,” starring Mark O’Brien, gives a blow-by-blow account of his rise to fame, literally. It begins with an autopsy detailing each and every war wound and how he earned them.
It’s a striking way to kick off the story of a man who was scarred physically and mentally from his many years in the net. We first meet him as a shy child with a beloved brother and abusive father. His brother’s death at seventeen carved a hole in his heart that was never filled, despite being married to Pat (Georgina Reilly) and fathering seven children. Booze (“I’m not drunk. I just forgot to eat,” he slurs.), hockey and the reflected glow of being in the NHL kept him going but the lifestyle—he earned 400 stitches on his face alone—took a toll and depression and erratic behaviour became his norm.
Sawchuk saw his share of triumph and trouble but “Goalie” is not a hagiography of one of the legends of the game. Instead it is more an elegy for a man who spent much of his career earning $25 a game, occasionally playing with broken bones for fear of being traded.
O’Brien does a nice job of portraying Sawchuk’s duality. From a young man full of hope and promise to the battle-scarred veteran of the ice who let the pressure of performance weigh him down, O’Brien subtly portrays his descent.
Not so subtle is Kevin Pollak as Detroit general manager Jack Adams. He’s a sports manager straight out of Central Casting, given to saying things like, “We both know the game is played between those blood red poles!”
His flowery language aside, director Adriana Maggs manages to insert some real poetry into the film. Interspersed into the action are snippets of “Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems” by the director’s father Randall Maggs. His words add to the elegiac feel of the film and are a nice antidote when the film falls into the occasional “ice is thicker than blood” cliché.
Like all good sports movies “Goalie” isn’t about scores or stats, it’s about what drives the players to push themselves, to be warriors or be worthless.
